Packing Haul Bags for Big Walling

Haul bags are not like normal backpacks. They're heavier. You don't always get to just lift it and throw it on your back. This is how I do it, because my knees still work. Maybe not after I do this on this gravel. Get it where you want it before you lift it. And then, know where your straps are. There we go. I know where they are. And then I roll. And then once you get here, you're going to bump feet and stand up. Haul bags 101. Oh, wow. Don't know if I want to open with that one. Nope. You're down to the joke. Okay. Pretty bad. Welcome to the third How Not to Big Wall course, where we're going A to Z in everything you need to know to go up your first wall. And hopefully, this is not the only thing you're researching, but this will definitely help you. And this is a smaller piece of a bigger thing that we're doing called the Big Wall Bible, where we're able to contribute your guys' feedback into the course, where in our last video, we went over a packing list and how to prepare things. And that's going to have anybody who contributes their packing list and what they prepare and what they do. This video is all about the haul bag. Not how to get it to go up or down, how we put all those things into it. And when I'm hiking, it's in there differently than when I am hauling it. Or when I know I'm going to be at a belay for a while, or when I get to a place I'm going to be staying for the night. There is a methodical thought process behind it, because you only need certain things at certain points of the day. It's a one-chamber bag. There is no zipper pouch to be able to get to the bottom. So how you pack it does impact your wall once you start. But getting it to the wall, not so much. And in case you're new here, my name is Ryan Jinks. I've done 18 walls successfully since 2006. And my name is Jeremiah Letourneau. I'm a math teacher at a high school from the Midwest, and I've done eight successful big walls. And we don't know everything, but we know enough to help you make progress in your journey. By no means are we experts, and we look forward to hearing your feedback and what you do differently, respectfully. Yes, respectfully, please. And that's the whole point of the Big Wall Bible, that we're able to contribute everyone's thoughts into this. Now, Jeremiah is going to show his bag setup and what he does, and then I'm going to show my bag setup and what I do, because we do things very differently. I was a weekend warrior, and I live near Yosemite, and you are a teacher who only has... Summer's off in June and October are the only two times I get to be in Yosemite. The premium season, I think, as we learned in episode one. Yeah, go check it out. I've learned a lot of different systems here. I keep kind of changing every wall, right, because you continuously learn different scenarios on different walls, and so I have not found a perfect system that I absolutely love, but I keep learning tricks. And so I'm going to show you how I would go up my next wall and what I would do to prepare for that, based on what I've learned. So first off, how I attach my bag, and this is like they are just about to haul, right? So I actually do my lower strap because I like that the straps are actually different heights. You can see that they're different heights right now, and I actually use my top strap nice and loose, and that's what clips to the anchor. So I'm just going to undo that now, which gets me inside of my bag. What do most people do? They actually haul on the opposite direction, so they use the top strap and then the lower strap connects to the top. It keeps the bag a little bit more level looking, but truthfully, it doesn't really need to be as that redundant, and it doesn't need to be level. Otherwise, you have to lift all the weight up. Exactly. Okay. So you pull off the lower strap. Yep. So then I can actually get this one on and off super easy. What brand is this? This is a Kasten bag. This one's just a 70, and we're just using this for a demo, but this is actually the only bag that I brought up when I eight-soled up the South Base of Washington column. Does enough for just a night, two nights if it's just one person, but if I was going out with a partner, then I would definitely have a bigger bag. So again, I'm going to access it, so I'm nice and loose, so I can take that one off. What's in my bag, I learned this trick from Pete Zabrock, is to have everything on a daisy, individual daisy. So then all I have to do is find my top beaner. I can just go up and clip it up to a bolt, and everything is interconnected to that, so I can talk through the order of what is on my rack here, my internal rack. Is everything connected to this? Everything is connected to this, except for my massive stash of water at the bottom, and that's just because I don't really need to access it until later. And I'm going to be kind of re-clipping things, and I don't have that many spare beaners, so I just dedicated the ones that are really important that I want clipped, because the bottom waters I'm not pulling in, in and out, in and out, in and out throughout the day. So let's start at the top. At the very top, the very most important, because you're aid climbing, and aid climbing is terrifyingly scary, and you whip all the time, and you wear brown pants, so wag bags are on top. That's always on top. Always, for me, is wag bags are always on the top. You never know if you shouldn't have trusted a fart. So that's that. The next thing is my food bag, and my food bag is always my lunch item, so kind of the same food that I showed earlier in episode two. My meals, any snacks that I want, any bars, be able to pull those out, and those are at quick accessibility if they're not already in my pocket, but they're also for my partner when they're blowing as well. Is that 100% of your food? No, this is just my lunches. My meals later on, as you can see, are way down lower, because that's for my suppers later or from breakfast earlier. I don't need those until later. So just my lunches are up top. The next thing that I have that, after food, because I already carry a Nelogene on me, is the water that I need for the day. So this would be also for me and my partner, but just for demonstration, we're just going to put the water here. You can see, got it strapped up, and we got the attachment point. So with this water, this is for me, and then I would have a second gallon for my partner for their water for the day. Then next is, depending on if I need to cook food, because you can see, the next goes burner and then food, is getting ready for my meals, assuming that I'm at camp. So getting that all ready. And then the last thing that I would do is actually get my sleep stuff. So now I can kind of pull this up a little higher, food's going to come out, and I have those two things attached. So one of them is my bivvy sack that I need, and then the other one is my sleeping bag. They also have beaners on there, so then I can take them off, unclip it, and start setting up my camp, whether it's on a portal ledge or a natural ledge. I have those two things. And then at the very, very bottom is my loose gallon of water that is for the next day. So when I'm all done and this gallon is empty, I would swap out these beaners. The new gallon is what goes up here, and the empty gallon would go on the bottom after I would crush it. So it would go back in there. And then all I need to do when I'm all done with my camp, everything is reclipped for the night, everything is done. All I need to do, essentially, let's try to do this best, I guess, is try to reorganize this, but it actually goes in pretty well in the order that I like. And then I just unclip, and I can shove this all back nicely in the bag. If you drop it, it's already still nicely connected, and this can go all back. So everything goes back in the bag, it gets rolled back up nicely here, has a cinch strap on the top as well, and then clips back, and everything's accessible. And the nice thing about that whole system is it doesn't have to be done at the morning, it doesn't have to be done at night, it can also be done mid-belay. So if you're done belaying, you could access it with your hands if you needed to at your belay to be able to get water, food, whatever you need, and you always have the stuff that you like on top. So that's my system, and that's how I pack my bag usually if I'm going to be on a walk. Before I show you how to carry my bag, let me show you what's in my bag. There's a link in the description below for 10% off Rocky Talkies. These things last for days, even if you forget to turn them off at night, super durable, the range is great, they're solid, loud, and everything. They are a great big wall essential. I took cheapy walkies on so many projects, and it made me epic. And I've been able to do giant projects with this, and without these I realized later I would not have been able to do it. So thank you, Rocky, for sponsoring part of this video. I'm going to place this right here, and talk about my haul bag now. I'm going to start as if I'm at the car, and I am hiking in. The heavy stuff while I'm hiking is going to be at the bottom, the light stuff's going to be at the top. I pack it differently depending on what I'm doing. Right now I'm hiking. And then when I get there, so light man, it's never this light, I'm going to take all my stuff out, and I'm going to put my straps in this little kangaroo pouch right here. Because this all comes apart, which I'll show you, it all gets tucked in, then, then you pack it. I always forget to do that and have to unpack it again. So you want to free up these straps, and these buckles are going to be protected by this cover here. The Metolius ones are also protected, but you can actually remove them if you'd like to. These ones you can't. Down here, got to go up through this buckle, then through this buckle. Now this isn't a haul bag review on whether or not I like this bag, I just have it. And I do like how much padding is here, compared to the Metolius bag that I used for years. But this is a lot stiffer of a material, especially when it's cold out, and if it gets a kink in it, and it's poking you in the side, there's almost no fixing it. Don't lose these. Sometimes I put them in a Ziploc bag, and then I put them in the protective pouch inside. But in this case, I'm going to just be careful, and I'm going to put it in the kangaroo pouch at the bottom. Now this is possible with stuff in the bag, but very, very difficult. These are now loose, and I'm going to tuck those in. And the moral of every story we're going to tell you is to practice at home. If you get this bag or any other bag from ExtremeGear.org, 10% supports this channel. If you get a bag, practice at home, taking it apart and putting it back together multiple times. See if you can time yourself, see if you can get under 60 seconds, play some games or whatever to make it fun. We definitely want you to not show up having doing anything the first time at the wall. This waist strap comes off, and what's cool about the Kassen bags that Jeremiah has is this part has a clippable system, so you can actually use this as a bosun chair, which is pretty cool. Now I have a bosun chair kind of built into my haul bag, and I'll show you in just a minute. I'm just going to tri-fold this, and it kind of makes it a little fat right here, but there we go. Straps are in. Now I'm going to show you how I pack this haul bag. Now I'm packing this for both Jeremiah and myself, and this is a foam pad that is going to protect not only my stuff inside, but the bag itself from anything sharp pointing into the edge and dragging holes into the side. This is a little bit longer of a foam pad than I typically like to use. I don't like it going around itself more than once. I like to just have it touch, and it be super good enough. Sometimes those cheap blue foam pads are taller and will cover more surface area, and if I'm on a portaledge, sometimes this is super good enough as a pad, but that's more we covered in the second video in the sleeping stuff. So now I'm going to take my water, and I'm going to sneak this water in here because I don't have another gallon. Don't use these. They leak. And I'm going to fill the base up with my water, and it looks like this. Jeremiah is such a fast climber that we're only going to be on the wall for a night, so I don't have enough water to create a solid base. Notice I'm just putting things in loosely, but I have a carabiner for each item. I put a daisy chain horizontally on the anchor, and I take all this stuff and I clip because I'm only pulling this out at night. I'm not just pulling this out every time I need something. I'll be back. What don't I need during the day? Sleeping bags. Or you did something really wrong. So here's another sleeping bag, and carabiner up. Air mattress. For some reason I think I'm going to use a hammock. I just need to fill up this bag, so here's another item. Here's my sleeping bag in my makeshift stuff shack. Stuff shack. Here's my personal bag with my pillow, some of my poop stuff. What else do I have in here? Oh, I guess I have my super good enough polyester shirt. No, I'm just kidding. This is my personal bag. This is not my breakfast and dinner or my lunch bag. That's a difference. Put that in there. Jeremiah's food bag, like all of his food. Notice the carabiner. I am putting the breakfast and dinners, not the bottom, but below where I need. Only the top level do I have access to while I do this. So I'm going to set this up here. Now, nothing in here I'm going to need during the day. Now I'm going to put stuff in here that I do want during the day. Ideally this would have water in it. If it's cold or out, just one of these should suffice, especially if I already have a Nalgene that's full. This is two Nalgenes, by the way. A gallon is four Nalgenes. Then I'm only going to put one of these at the top, otherwise I'll pull two at the top so I don't have to stick my hand all the way through and pull one out. Which is maybe why I like the two liters, because they can slither out of my pile better. But anyways. This is Jeremiah's day bag, and this is my day bag. This is going to have my food for the day, maybe not for the whole trip. And this is going to have spare stuff that I might want. Maybe headlamp batteries, maybe a light jacket, depending on the weather, whatever. Anything I want is going to be in this bag. It's all I get for the day. And it's going to be right here on top. And they have carabiners. Everything I have in here so far is something I can sit on. But wait, you'll see why. Now, I still have room in this, and I can't recall why, because every time I go on a waltz I always sit at the top. But anyways. This is more like a gooseneck thing, which I'll show you a really cool feature. Water lands on this if it's a light rain and fills the hole, which gets all your stuff wet. I hate this design. This is the only thing about this bag I hate. Metolius, you fold up like the Kassen bag, and you close. But anyways. I just don't climb when it's raining. This episode doesn't cover moving the bag up. It's just my relationship with the bag during the hike, during setting it up for this, and then when I get up here, how I'm going to get some stuff out, and how I'm going to use it to rest. So I'm going to take this upper carabiner, clip my swivel, slide my smart water bottle all the way down, which stops way up here, but now it's protecting the swivel and the carabiner. So, ready to haul! Bag is ready, and this is a cheesy Rocky plug, but this is when you would use it. Now if you have a second bag, instead of clipping it to the bottom of this one, you clip it to a loose leash that would be clipped to this carabiner. Now this is how I'm going to dock the bag, but you don't want a train of haul bags all attached underneath each other, or it's going to be difficult to bring them up to the anchor later, especially if they're heavy. Before I go up, please keep in mind we have isolated this anchor down to be overly simplified, and this is not a life-supporting personal anchor. I have more than one, and I'm always tied into the climbing rope. So for Troll Patrol, I just don't want to overcomplicate this to show how I operate this bag when I'm up there. Okay, now I'm going to go up. Hi, I'm Jeremiah. I'm here at this anchor, and I've hauled the bag up. Ryan is fixed to this quad anchor. I'm clipped here with multiple points, not just this, and my bag is here. And my bag is here, because this is where I'm going to dock it. Now I've tied a rope to this handle here, and the way I've done it is if for some magical reason this came undone, it's still attached to this. I'm going to take this docking rope, clip it to this carabiner, come from behind the carabiner, and now that's a munter that I can release later. I want to mule or lock it off, so I come around here. This is not a knot class right now, but I'm just showing you what I'm doing. This will be later. The reason I'm showing you this is I'm going to release this now. So my backup for that, and I'm kind of jumping the gun on the video that we're doing about hauling, is, well, here we go, my backup here. This strap I'm going to open up, and I have access to what's in this bag now, and that's what this video is focused on, is me being able to take this lunch bag that I'm going to want later when I am belaying Ryan after he comes up here, because I'm done doing my block of leads. I don't need my water. I want to have some stuff in here, but I don't want to stand in my aiders for however long Ryan takes. I do this. Oh, it's glorious. If you've been standing on your feet in these aiders for a while, this is my relationship with my peg, and I wanted to show that to you. So Ryan just climbed. He is off belay, and he is going to fix my line, and I want to make sure this thing is ready to go. So let me share with you how I'm going to do that. I'm going to get off my little perch here and realize it's working time. So I want to put things back in there, and what's nice is I only have this bag to deal with. So I get that in there and close this up, and you don't want that haul line going up until you're ready. Now if this haul line started getting pulled up and we're not able to communicate, then basically that's a problem. Let's say I had this cleaned off. This is a beaner that we're going to want to use for the next spot, so I'm going to remove that, and then all I have to do is clip that, and he can start hauling. All right, Ryan, ready to haul. Good timing. And then I can pop this off and pop this off, and if there's a lower out and it goes off to the side, I can basically belay this thing to go wherever I want. So that's my relationship with the stuff inside, and the fact I was able to sit on it. I've checked this is still smooth. It's hauling up on this side, the side I can allow to be scraped up, and then basically goes up, up, up, super good enough, unclip this, and as I'm going to reiterate a lot in this class, if this thing is moving, my line is fixed. I never have to wonder about my line being fixed if the leader is hauling this bag. So if you're a leader, make sure that never gets miscommunicated, rocky talkies are not. So what I find interesting about packing my haul bags is it's not like packing for a backpacking trip. When I look at my haul bags, sometimes I actually look at it and say, is that it? Is that all I need? Never said that. I've always said, wow, that's a lot of stuff. Pack at home before you go up, before the day you try to hike it. See if it fits in the haul bag, because if it's your first big wall, you're going to be like, bummer, that's not enough space, or this is too big of a bag. We might need two. And two mediums might be better than a large. One tip I always keep in mind is just because I can fit all my gear in one bag, should definitely do it, does not mean that you only bring one bag. The reason why I found for bringing an extra haul bag, even if it's like some lighter stuff or it ends up being the garbage, is when I walk off the top of a climb, if there's a walk-off, I like to be able to have a second bag to split gear with, so then one person can take half the load, because even though your water's gone and your food's gone, you still have to get your rack, your ropes, and your sleeping gear back down, which can still be surprisingly heavy. Quite a bit, especially if you're the only one with a bag. Practice every day keeps the OCR away. When I go on a really serious trip, whether it's like a really big highline, really big zipline, big rope jump, or big walls, because I treat them all about the same, I will pack the bag in its entirety, because there's nothing in here I need. I have usually a second sleeping setup that I keep in the car, so when I get down, and this has got all wet because I epic'd, I have a great car setup. Not to sleep in my car, but just to find relief. But I will pack this bag, and I will lay it all out every day, and then repack the bag, and then lay it all out. And I'll do that for seven days, and I'll do it until I stop going, oh shit, I almost forgot my headlamp. Now we're going to have lists on the Big Wall Bible. I'll write out my list, and if you write out your list, we'll include it, just submit it through the I'm-not-too-big-wall way of doing it, so it's easy for me to just go bloop, and add it. I really appreciate the 1% of people who do donate via perfectstreamgear.org, support through Rocky Talky, or whatever. I'm trying to get to 1,000 patrons at $1 per episode in order to make this channel viable, because that is really the lifeblood of what keeps this thing going, and we are almost there, and I don't need it forever. I know commitments are scary. I just need that for about a year or two to not just look like a big channel, but be a big enough channel to throw enough weight around in order to move away from donations. But I'm not there yet. I'm going to put out a challenge after this video, is I want those that are watching this and reading the Big Wall Bible, don't forget to read the Big Wall Bible and not just watch these episodes. This is a small part of it. But to also live one week, or three days, whatever you need to do, out of just your haul bag. Yeah. And if you can figure out how much water do you typically eat or drink, maybe eat sometimes depending on how cold it is here in Minnesota, what meals you eat, all of that stuff, and then put in a comment down below about whether you were successful, or how long it took you, or how much water you drink, that would be a really cool thing to add to the comments down below. Or if you come off a wall, maybe we can have a place where it doesn't blow up the book, but I just got off this wall, almost like a trip report, but based on logistics, this much water, this much time based, that'd be great. Yeah. And I hate to say this, but you should really practice at home, going to the bathroom in a bag, and I forgot to mention this in the last video, with your harness on. And if anybody catches you doing that, just tell them, the guy from this channel called How Not To told me to do it, it'll make perfect sense to them. But thank you for watching. Click the thing that looks like this so the algorithm knows to tell more people about it. I don't think I'll even include that, actually. It depends. Just like what your mom wears. Oh, that was a good one!